Our Practices
Foundational practices for embodying and expressing The Experience of We
Meaning-Making Together
A quick start guide
You can understand what happened and still feel lost.
The facts are clear. The situation makes sense. You can describe it accurately. And yet something remains unsettled, because the question pressing on you isn't what happened but what does it mean? What does it say about us? What does it mean for where we're going? Does it matter, and if so, why?
We make meaning constantly, but mostly we do it alone. Each of us constructs our own interpretation of what things signify. We walk away from the same experience with entirely different understandings of its importance. And because we rarely bring those interpretations into the space between us, we end up isolated in our sense of what matters. Unsure whether our reading of things is real. Unable to access the interpretation that might only become visible when two perspectives meet.
Meaning-making together isn’t about arriving at a single correct answer. It’s about refusing to carry significance alone. It’s about bringing our interpretations to each other, seeing what resonates and what diverges, and sometimes building something together that neither of us could have reached in isolation. Meaning made together has relational ground. It can hold weight that meaning made alone cannot.
One practice to try
Think of a person in your life who’s open to experimentation, and invite them into trying something new with you.
The significance question
Choose something you've both been through recently. A conversation that stayed with you. A change in your circumstances. A hard week. A good one. Something where the facts are clear but the significance hasn't been explored together.
Ground in what happened first. Briefly name the situation you're both reflecting on. Make sure you're interpreting the same thing. One sentence is enough: "That conversation with your parents last Sunday."
Ask each other: “What does this mean to you?” Not "what do you think about it?" but "what does it mean to you? What does it touch? What significance does it carry?" Take turns. Go deeper than opinion.
Listen for what matters. As your companion shares their meaning, notice what values are underneath. Meaning reveals what we care about. You're learning something about each other, not just about the event.
Notice where meanings meet and where they differ. You don't need to resolve the differences. Just see them. "For you this was about freedom. For me it was about loyalty. That's interesting."
See what emerges between you. After both meanings are shared, pause. Is there a significance that becomes visible only now, in the space between your two interpretations? Name it if you can.
This can take ten minutes or an hour. The practice is in the asking, not the arriving.
The full guide, Meaning-Making Together, has several practices for developing this capacity: grounding in shared understanding; surfacing individual meanings; exploring divergence and convergence; building meaning together; connecting meaning to implication; making meaning about the relationship itself; and more. It also explores the layers of meaning (personal, relational, contextual, existential), how meaning-making differs from sense-making, and how to work with the common challenges: one person's meaning dominating, avoiding depth, settling too quickly, or losing connection to reality.
When we can make meaning together, events stop being things that merely happen to us. They become part of a story we're telling together. Significance gains relational ground. And even difficult experiences become weavable into a shared life that makes sense.
If this resonates, we recommend trying …
Sense-Making Together
Developing Shared Values Together
Telling Our Story Together
